nted out to him that his standard of housing, clothing, diet and
entertaining was probably a little higher than theirs. It is really no
proof of virtuous purity that a man's expenditure exceeds his income.
And finally some other of his hearers were left unsatisfied by his
silence with regard to the current proposal to pool all clerical
stipends for the common purposes of the church. It is a reasonable
proposal, and if bishops must dispute about stipends instead of
preaching the kingdom of God, then they are bound to face it. The sooner
they do so, the more graceful will the act be. From these personal
apologetics the bishop took up the question of the exemption, at the
request of the bishops, of the clergy from military service. It is
one of our contrasts with French conditions--and it is all to the
disadvantage of the British churches.

In his Piccadilly contribution to the National Mission of Repentance and
Hope the bishop did not talk politics but sex. He gave his hearers the
sort of stuff that is handed out so freely by the Cinema Theatres, White
Slave Traffic talk, denunciations of "Night Hawks"--whatever "Night
Hawks" may be--and so on. One this or another occasion the bishop--he
boasts that he himself is a healthy bachelor--lavished his eloquence
upon the Fall in the Birth Rate, and the duty of all married people,
from paupers upward, to have children persistently. Now sex, like diet,
is a department of conduct and a very important department, but _it
isn't religion!_ The world is distressed by international disorder, by
the monstrous tragedy of war; these little hot talks about indulgence
and begetting have about as much to do with the vast issues that concern
us as, let us say, a discussion of the wickedness of eating very new and
indigestible bread. It is talking round and about the essential issue.
It is fogging the essential issue, which is the forgotten and neglected
kingship of God. The sin that is stirring the souls of men is the sin of
this war. It is the sin of national egotism and the devotion of men to
loyalties, ambitions, sects, churches, feuds, aggressions, and divisions
that are an outrage upon God's universal kingdom.

2

The common clergy of France, sharing the military obligations and the
food and privations of their fellow parishioners, contrast very vividly
with the home-staying types of the ministries of the various British
churches. I met and talked to several. Near Frise there were som